'Where does space end? It must end somewhere!' This issue with a series of accompanying questions and answers has a way of emerging here and there, coming and going - with and without resolution - all over the net. It usually evokes different responses from varying schools of thought. (Well then. What's it going to be in this sortie?)
Er, a Greek philosopher, (Agustaros?) said:
"There's always something larger than large and there's always something smaller than smal".
Einstein said that 'the universe is finite in space but unbounded in time' - I think that means that it may have finite parameters at any given moment in time, but that the parameters are endlessly enlarging in space. Sounding a lot like some sort of an expanding - perhaps spiral shaped - universe...
There are still several variations on Steady State theory outside the restricted boundaries of the dubiously reigning big bang; the (supposedly out dated; possibly reinstated) Steady State theory harbors no beginning or end.
Since the mid '70's evidence is accumulating that the expanding universe is not only growing larger, it is picking up speed - that is, the expanding universe is beginning to show strong evidence that it is accelerating.
Then there's variations on the theme: the universal scenarios are that it may accelerate to a point of 'slowing down and collapsing back on itself', only to re-exploded and so forth, indefinitely in a dynamic of a 'pulsating universe', or. that it may just play out an interpretation of the 2nd law of thermodynanamics and fairly decay and poop out of existence as we know it, leaving only a residual scattering of unorganized atoms and subatomic particles. Then you got yer Steady State Theory - without beginning or end - which maintains about the same spatial density of subatomic particles making up atoms, making up molecules, making up systems of molecules like suns, planets and moons, making up galaxies making up universes...
So, it seems there are models of the universe which claim a beginning and ending and those that don't.
Getting back down to earth:
There's a print-painting of a terrier looking dog with a sailor boy on a box of Crackerjack, holding an inevitably smaller box of Crackerjack, upon which is printed another image of what appears to be the same dog beside another of what looks like the same sailor, only smaller; holding yet another box of Crackerjack; with what would seem has a printed painting of another dog beside another sailor holding a yet smaller box of Crackerjack and so on...
It seems to go on forever, if the pictures could somehow be made ever smaller and still exist, as the visibly descending and/or ascending sequence of images certainly suggests... Geometrically squared rectangular boxes of heirarchically arranged Crackerjack containers and icons, out of infinite smallness proceeding to infinite largeness...
Perhaps an important representation of Einstein’s presently abandoned, big bang plundered cosmological constant established Unified Field without mathematics. Multi-moment space-time. An ensemble of constantly enlarging systems...
....an ever enlarging - and ever diminishing - blue & white terrier dog with a blue and white sailor boy holding a red striped box of Crackerjack with the image of a Sailor with a Terrier dog, may never again be the same.
Who said the ever-smaller sequenced pictures - smaller or larger, past, present & future - had to ‘end’, ever?
If the atoms of the universe of the past get ever smaller and the atoms of the universe of the present get ever larger and the painter or printer passed his job on from one generation to the next, where's the ‘end’ of the illustrated hierarchy of images - the multi-moment space-time ensemble of differently sized pictures of the same dog and sailor boy holding a box of Crackerjack with a picture of himself and his dog on it?
Same thing happens on a cylindrical container of MORTON salt, the byword of which is ‘When it rains, it pours."
Meaning that humidity or dampness in the air does not prevent the salt from being smoothly dispensed from the container, or whatever shaker it may be contained by. The pictorial logo on this dark blue colored, cylindrically shaped package is a little girl in a yellow skirt, walking in the rain, holding an open umbrella over her head with her right hand; with a container of MORTON salt, pouring out of the metal spout cradled in and under her left hand and arm; upon which is the same pictorial; and so on; squared - same as the CRACKERJACK.
Then, there's Land O Lakes" butter and dairy products 'Where goodness begins'. It's an icon of a beautiful young Native American woman perched on a lake backgrounded - presumably Minnesota - mound of grass, offering a sample of the product. In this case, a pound of butter upon which she is the labeled icon exhibiting a pound of butter; squared. It doesn't look like the Land O Lakes anecdote of 'Where goodness begins' has any explanation of where it ends... Yes. The same thematically endless heirarchy as the multi-moment 4-D MORTON salt icon - 'When it rains (water) it (Morton salt, still) pours', and, the CrackerJack Sailor - squared.
Einstein was apparently caught up in a similar dilemma, only it was in Switzerland; back in the early 20th century.
The imperative that 'space has to end somewhere' may be as dogmatic as the Crackerjack sailor's K-9 companion. There's a lot of perspectives holding to the view that ('... must end somewhere!') space (space-time) doesn't really have to end at all.
(Sort of like this seemingly ubiquitous internet thread? Seems to be scattered about asking what space is and/or where and when does it end...)
Consider the word 'infinity'. Does it mean what it says, or not? Then there's 'endless', and 'pi r squared' and 'eternal'. There are words and equations and concepts that say some things needn't begin or end anywhere, contrary to the limitations of the anthropomorphic (only human) experience.
Perhaps these contentious words should be extirpated from all languages that express them. Perhaps the beginnings of these man made concepts should be brought to a proper and fitting end.
Of course everyone is entitled to their own endless ensemble of multi-moment space-time contained opinions... This post (unlike this seemingly ubiquitous internet residing, endless thread?) has a beginning and ending for example. There's no denying it? "It has to begin and end somewhere."
(Squared.) - Refer,
The Rise & Fall of Gravity, by K. B. Robertson
http://forums.delphiforums.com/EinsteinGroupie 
Re: 'Every story has a beginning, middle and ending?' Then again, maybe not. -
05-01-2007, 08:00 AM
Linear Mode
